Re: Near miss

Posted by fixerupper on December 15, 2013 at 08:40:09 from (100.42.83.15):

In Reply to: Near miss posted by John Fulton on December 15, 2013 at 05:30:27:

John Fulton said: (quoted from post at 06:30:27 12/15/13) Thread about tractor sliding on ice got me to thinking, we have all had numerous near-miss accidents that may still haunt our memory. One that sticks out in my mind is when I borrowed a 16 ft. trailer to haul some used power poles from power company about 20 miles from farm. The trailer did not have brakes. When I got to power company pole yard there was just one employee on duty there who I coerced to help me load the poles by hand. I had parked the trailer next to the poles so that the butt end was toward the rear of the trailer, and we just laid them over onto the bed of trailer, even though I knew better than to do so. But when you are working with volunteer help, you tend to not do things as they should be done. Anyhow, I chained the poles down and paid, and was on my way. Well about 2 miles from town as I was going down small grade, the trailer started to fishtail. Dumb me, instead of accelerating, I hit the brakes, causing truck and trailer to do a 180. As luck would have it, I did not go off the road over a 20 ft bank, nor hit any on-coming traffic, nor spill any poles onto the road. Only damage was to a trailer wheel and tire which I had to replace. I drive by this hill quite often and always think what might have been. BTW, there are now guard-rails on that section.

I had something along that line happen when I was pulling an old Deere rotary hoe home with the pickup. It was one of those older gang types with the carrying wheels in front of the hoe. When the hoe was raised the tongue pushed up on the drawbar hard. I hooked my 3/4 ton Dodge to it, the farmer hooked his tractor hydraulics to the hoses and raised it so I could lock it in the raised transport position to enable him to remove his cylinder. He raised the hoe and up went the back of the pickup. When the cylinder hit the stop the hoe was barely off the ground and the pickup was barely ON the ground. I had a 30 mile journey home on fairly flat ground but when I got out on the blacktop road in front of his place I quickly knew it'd be a long slow trip. I eventually got the feel of things so I could get it up to a whopping 20 MPH without fishtailing. All went well till I turned onto the gravel road going to my farm. By then I was confident at 20 MPH so soon after I got it up to 20 on the gravel I suddenly found my self pointing east, then west, then east again. The pickup kept on slowly fishtailing even after I was down to 10 MPH so I finally just locked the brakes and came to a stop in the middle of the road. Nothing hurt but I sure do remember it. Another time, I took a wagon to the local gravel pit for a load of gravel. This was a 6X12 Heider on a 8 ton Westendorf gear. I scaled empty, went back around to the pit, and he loaded me with 8 ton. When the payloader went back to the scale he took a steep shortcut lane so I decided to follow, but I couldn't go very fast because it was rough. I was locked in Four wheel drive so I thought nothing of pulling the steep lane. I made it to the top and when my front wheels just went over the top I spun out and the wagon started dragging me backward. Oh did I tell you this lane had steep sides? All I could do was back that wagon back down using my mirrors holding the brakes just enough so I still had steering, . The lane was maybe 300 feet long and I almost made it to the bottom when I wigged when I should have wagged and the wagon jackknifed and went backward down what was left of the embankment. I couldn't get it pulled out so the payloader came back down and pulled me out and up the slope. That's quite a feeling! The payloader operator was my brother-in-law so the whole family had to hear about it. Jim

This post was edited by fixerupper at 08:43:40 12/15/13.

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